


Daylight After the Day

by the_rck



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Fire Temple arc, Gen, Misinterpreting the data, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, religious speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26059996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Officially, technically, Asuma had never been read in on the ferret retrieval mission. Unofficially... Tsunade-sama had concerns about long term repercussions and had no one else sworn to her who had a better grasp of the religious side of things. Jiraiya understood the chakra side of religion, but that wasn't the same thing, merely close enough to be dangerous.
Comments: 35
Kudos: 526
Collections: Dreaming of Sunshine Exchange 2020 A, Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	Daylight After the Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JohnBurtonLee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnBurtonLee/gifts).



Fifteen minutes after they passed the gates, Asuma lit a cigarette. He wasn't inclined to chatter and was more than a little relieved that Shikako hadn't tried to force him into conversation.

Ino would have, so Asuma had rather expected it. He hadn't been sure how he'd respond. He and Shikako didn't so much know each other as know of each other. Asuma understood meaningless social discussion, but part of what he enjoyed about trips to the Fire Temple was that he had no need to do anything meaningless.

As Asuma started smoking, Shikako looked sideways at him. She frowned slightly then blinked, her face going blank.

He had more than half expected her to demand to know why they weren't running. He'd almost looked forward to telling her how important it was to make a careful transition to the right mental space for the Fire Temple. It wouldn't even have been complete bullshit.

Shikamaru had complained more than once about his sister's recklessness. Shikamaru blamed Kakashi.

Even Chouji thought Shikamaru was being willfully oblivious. Ino had less kind words for it. Asuma had withheld judgment until after the chunin exams in Grass.

Officially, technically, Asuma had never been read in on the ferret retrieval mission. Unofficially... Tsunade-sama had concerns about long term repercussions and had no one else sworn to her who had a better grasp of the religious side of things. Jiraiya understood the chakra side of religion, but that wasn't the same thing, merely close enough to be dangerous.

Tsunade hadn't asked Asuma directly, but Shizune had confided oddly specific 'vague details' under cover of letting him know that Shikamaru might need some emotional support. She'd also asked him some pointed questions about what made a thing a god and what happened to humans who were god-touched.

Shizune had frowned and said firmly, "And not Sages. It's not the same thing."

Learning that his Hokage, the woman he'd once childishly called 'Tsunade-nee,' understood that there was a difference came as a profound relief to Asuma. He'd seen people eviscerate themselves by running full-tilt into assumptions about gods.

The gods only occasionally noticed.

Asuma was also glad that his Hokage understood that Shikamaru might need support. 'She got better' really didn't decrease the potential for flashbacks and nightmares. Asuma had enough distance from Shikako to be detached, and Asuma could speak from experience about reactions-- and overreactions-- to the injury of a sibling.

"Shikako's report," Shizune had said, "can't be entirely trusted." She'd made a sharp, frustrated gesture. "Not that she's deliberately lying. Probably."

Asuma had nodded. His fingers had itched for a cigarette, but he'd known that Shizune wouldn't hesitate to put him through a wall if he lit up. "Has her behavior changed?"

Shizune had shrugged. "She's a Nara trained by Hatake Kakashi. We have no idea what's normal." She hadn't bothered to say that Asuma had access to three children who had known Shikako all of their lives.

Asuma's students wouldn't even realize what they were telling him.

"We're not worried about malice or even intelligence leaks. Those are things we know how to watch for, and there's been no sign," Shizune had added. She'd waved a hand to indicate everything else that was still on the table.

Asuma had nodded and accepted a long term mission that would never pay him anything but Tsunade-sama's goodwill.

"You worry people," he told Shikako in answer to the question she hadn't asked. "This isn't physical training, and I can tell Shikamaru that I didn't tire you out."

For an instant, when he said her brother's name, a deep unhappiness flickered across Shikako's face. "I don't know how to make him not worry," she said. She shrugged then added, "No, I know, but it would make me not be me any more."

He didn't think that was the full truth of her side of things, but it was a normal enough issue for teenage siblings. "You're not supposed to make him happy, kid, especially not at that price." He looked down the road ahead of them rather than sideways at her. "I couldn't make tou-san happy with me."

"Hence the years away from Konoha." Shikako's tone was dry enough to make him want to pull out his canteen. "I have reasons to stay."

Asuma shrugged. "I did, too."

"Did it help? The leaving, I mean." She sounded almost morbidly curious.

"With some things," Asuma admitted. "That specific thing. But--" He channeled a little chakra and snuffed his cigarette. He tucked the butt into a fireproof pouch. "It's not that people out there didn't... Everyone's got a box to shove you into. It's just that none of them-- the ones out there-- were people whose disappointment hurt me."

"That sounds--"

He half expected her to say 'wonderful,' so her actual final word took him by surprise.

"--lonely."

That wasn't a thing Nara Shikako ought to speak of like a personal and soul-shriveling truth.

Asuma made himself stop and consider that because he realized that he'd forgotten her team. Hatake, Uchiha, Uzumaki, all three of them alone. He barely managed to conceal the hitch in his step as his feet tried to glue themselves to the road.

All three of them desperately wanted her to approve of the current shape of their lives.

He wondered which had come first-- their reliance on her opinions or her providing subtle boundaries regarding acceptable behavior. The social skill involved had to pre-date the ferret retrieval mission, and it wasn't anywhere in her files.

"Are you okay, Asuma-sensei?"

Of course she'd noticed.

"Just a little carelessness," he said. He gave her a wide smile. "If you weren't Kakashi's, I'd have stolen one of his lines."

"One of the ones for annoying us or one of the ones for distracting us?" She was as good as calling Asuma a liar, but she didn't sound like that was what she was doing.

The very fact that he wasn't completely sure was a little disconcerting. His years in the Daimyo's court had included a lot of evaluating people based on what they did rather than on what they said.

If he hadn't known about the god in Wind, he'd have wondered how Shikamaru's supposed mouse of a sister became the special jounin walking beside him. Since he did know, he thought he understood. 

It wasn't a truth Shikamaru would ever accept, though; the thing in the desert had terrified him. He would hear 'change' and interpret it as 'damage.' He wouldn't see that, given a decade or two, Shikako might well have gotten there entirely on her own.

Well, nearly there.

Asuma wondered what Shikako had seen, how much time had passed for her during Shikamaru's seconds of panic, what she knew and wasn't telling. He suspected a great deal, but not a bit could be proven.

He didn't have answers to offer Shizune, but he thought he might have a better idea of the questions Tsunade-sama ought to be asking. Well, not _asking_. He doubted that actually asking Shikako would yield any information at all.

The fact that it wouldn't was all the proof that Asuma needed to conclude that the god had given her years-- years and other things-- and then allowed her to fold all of them back inside a human body that no longer quite fit. That gift would explain the seals, too, and the not-quite-normal angle from which she tended to approach problems.

She'd come back because her brother needed her, because she still loved in a human way, but the temporary disconnection had broken something that she and Shikamaru used to have.

They weren't twins any more. They might still love each other as twins and certainly still expected the ease they'd once had, but Shikako was only human again by the grace of the god that had chosen her.

And she wasn't very human, not really. Humane, yes, when she could be, but not human.

Asuma hoped that Tsunade-sama would understand it.

Shikako wasn't on the dangerous path to being a sage. She was already far down a different road.

Some day, as surely as Asuma would one day retire to the Fire Temple, Nara Shikako would walk back into that garden in the desert and return to Gelel. 

She knew exactly where her soul would go when her body gave out, and it didn't frighten her at all.

Asuma lit another cigarette and wished he had the same certainty.


End file.
